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ARIANNA a la recherche

At the end of September 2017, OPERA OMNIA will present the premiere of Andrew Lawrence-King’s remake of Monteverdi’s lost masterpiece, Arianna (1608), performed by the young professionals and advanced students of the International Baroque Opera Project at Moscow State Theatre ‘Natalya Sats’. Read more about the project here. Singers, continuo, instrumentalists and technical theatre specialists may apply to take part, here.

HOW to remake Monteverdi’s lost Arianna?

The first article in this series explores “WHY remake Arianna” here. Right now, I’m in the midst of the research and creative process of writing my own remake of Monteverdi’s lost Arianna: the prologue and finale have been composed, and I’m polishing the detailed plans for the many choruses and small ensembles.

There are two parts to the question of ‘how’ to remake a lost baroque opera: how should the result come out, what kind of work should it be? And how should that result be achieved, by what methodology? This post looks as the first part of the ‘how’ question: what is the remake intended to be?

Inspired by the impeccable scholarship, yet fundamentally practical approach of Tim Carter’s book, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre here, I have a clear goal in mind. I’m not trying to re-create a lost musical masterpiece: I’m writing the score for a music-drama, for a performance in a theatre, with singers and musicians, and for an audience. Just as was the case for Monteverdi in Mantua in 1608, whatever ideas I might have of an ‘ideal’ composition, I have to write for the situation at hand, for particular performers, for a particular venue, for the anticipated audience.

If this project lives on, and my remade Arianna has a revival, perhaps with another cast, maybe in another venue, certainly with another audience, then there will need to be certain changes, for practical reasons. This is what we see, for example, in the two manuscript sources of Poppea, which reflect not only changes made after the premiere, but also further changes for two different productions, in two different cities, Venice and Naples.

Imitation

Keeping a practical outcome in mind encourages me to see the libretto not only as a text to be set to music, but also as the script for a theatrical performance, with hints of scenery, costumes, entrances and exits, of the emotional background and changing moods of the various characters. Without wanting to impose a Stanislavski-style, method-actor’s back-story on every anonymous chorus-member, there are nevertheless clear differences in character between the various soloists from the choir (I’m grateful to Tim Carter for the suggestion to investigate such differences). In Orfeo (1607), these ensemble-soloists are named as Pastori (idealised Shepherds in pastoral Arcadia); in Arianna (1608), they are members of a choir of Pescatori (similarly idealised Fishermen, who tend their nets just as the shepherds tend their sheep, and who – like the Pastori – spend their free time in love-affairs, singing and dancing). Following Professor Carter’s lead, and with his many helpful comments in private correspondence, my organisation of the various choirs – Soldiers of Teseo, Fishermen, and Soldiers of Bacchus – reflects cues and clues given by the sung texts.

Considering the end result as a theatrical performance, rather than merely a musical score, also encourages thinking about gesture, one of the most important aspects of rhetorical delivery and character acting. Indeed, the anonymous c1630 Il Coragohere defines acting as ‘imitating with gesture’.

Whilst there is tendency nowadays to think of gesture as a ‘bolt-on’ extra to historically informed musical performance, historical sources make it clear that Action (not only gestures of the hands, but facial expressions and movements of the whole body) was fundamental, ‘built-in’ from the outset. As he began work on a new project, Monteverdi himself searched through the libretto, looking for powerful emotions to express, and also for gestures (implied by the words) which could be imitated in instrumental music.

In a series of letters to Alessandro Striggio (who wrote the libretto for Orfeo) concerning an opera being planned in 1627, La finta pazza Licori (a few months later the project was abandoned), Monteverdi discusses and links the concepts of ‘imitation’ (dramatic representation, whether in acting, singing or instrumental music) and gesture.

The words [should] mimic either gestures or noises or any other kind of imitative idea that might suggest itself (24 May)

I am constantly aiming to have lively imitations of the music, gestures and tempi take place beind the scene (10 July)

So instrumental music (played di dentro, behind the scenic backdrop, as specified in Orfeo) would imitate not only the singer’s music (the lead role was to be sung by Margherita Basile), but also her acting, specifically her gestures. Monteverdi’s instructions for the Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda similarly call for the actors’ passi & gesti, the instrumentalists’ varied sounds and the declamation of the text to be delivered in such a way that the three Actions (i.e. three ways of presenting drama) come together in a united representation.

che le tre ationi venghino ad’incontrarsi in una imitatione unita.

Rehearsing Combattimento in Andrew Lawrence-King’s production for the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, incorporating swordplay from Capo Ferro (1610).

In both these works, Monteverdi’s aim was for his music to create effetti – not only a good effect in general, but also the ‘special effects’ of non-musical noises (e.g. the sounds of battle), and the emotional effect of ‘moving the passions’ – affetti. In this remake of Arianna, my aim is similarly to unite the essential concepts underlying Monteverdi’s vision of what we now call ‘opera’: drama as Action; acting as Gesture (of hands, face and the whole body); music and acting as Imitation; musical Effects that move the Affects (the audience’s emotions); all rooted in the communicative power (Energia) of detailed poetic imagery Enargeia.

Read more about affetti/effetti, Energia/Enargeia in Caccini’s Le Nuove Musichehere.

Three ways to represent Monteverdi’s lost Arianna

Our project is certainly not the first attempt to construct an opera around the Lamento d’Arianna. Of course, many ensembles have programmed other baroque music around the Lament, in order to create structure and flow, perhaps even a dramatic plot, within a concert performance. But in 1995, Alexander Goehr composed a modernist score for an ensemble including extensive pitched percussion, saxophone, sampler etc, but preserving some of Monteverdi’s vocal lines. A couple of excerpts are available to listen to on YouTube, the Lament here and another scene here both from the 1998 recording. In spite of the talented cast of singers, critical reviews were unfavourable. Writing for both Musical Times and Opera News, Tom Sutcliffe dismissed the project as ‘perfunctory’: ‘The opera reached its nadir in Goehr’s setting of the great surviving fragment itself [..] the harmonic implications of Goehr’s bass-line distortions destroyed the dramatic build-up’.

In 2015, Claudio Cavina, director of the ensemble La Venexiana, presented a semi-staged performance of his assemblage of Monteverdi’s music, reset to the texts of Rinuccini’s Arianna libretto. Using contrafacta in this way is a thoroughly historical procedure – we have 17th-century settings of Monteverdi madrigals to devotional texts and even a contrafactum of Arianna’s Lamento with a religious text in Latin, the Pianto della Madonna. The proof of a good contrafactum is not only that the word-setting works in terms of accentuation, word-painting and changes of affetto, but also that any remembered associations connected to the original text complement the new function of the music. This requires careful consideration and adaptation of the new text and the pre-extant music. Whatever success the private performance in 2015 enjoyed was sadly eclipsed by Maestro Cavina’s subsequent illness, preventing any follow-up to the initial experiment. It is to be hoped that he will continue to make a full recovery, and perhaps even return to the challenges of Arianna.

My re-make differs from both these previous projects in that the final product is intended to be a Historically Informed baroque performance (not only musically, but in the stage production too), and that it is new-composed, rather than an assemblage of contrafacta. Nevertheless my writing is carefully modelled on Monteverdi’s c1608 compositions.

In a number of works of this period, a particular word or short phrase is set to precisely the same notes. A good example is Ohime!, often set falling through a ‘forbidden’ interval, c F#, syncopated against a strong bass D between the two syllables.Probably this is the musical representation of a conventional way of declaiming such words in the spoken theatre, which (as Peri tells us) is the model for seicento recitative. Where such words or short phrases occur in Rinuccini’s Arianna, I’m copying Monteverdi’s standard recipe for them. So the word mirate is set in my constructed final scene to the same rising third to which it is set in Monteverdi’s music for the Lamento.

In other instances, a similar poetic image within a longer phrase, calls forth a similar (but not identical) musical setting. This encourages me to take suitable models from Monteverdi’s oeuvre as inspiration for a similar (but not identical) parallel setting. Thus my string ritornello for Apollo’s Prologue, a tenor singing tenderly to the lyre of love – su cetera d’amor teneri carmi – takes its rhythmic structure and rising phrases from the ritornello to the tenor solo from Monteverdi’s Book VII (1619) Tempro la cetra – I tune my lyre to sing the honour of Mars, god of war. But instead of the hard hexachord of G major harmonies and sharpened notes in Monteverdi’s melody, my music for Apollo’s cetra adopts the soft hexachord with G minor harmonies and melodies with Bb, Eb and F. Of course, it’s important that any associations my models evoke are appropriate: here, if the listener is reminded of another lyre being tuned, that’s all to the good, especially if the listener also appreciates the significance of the shift from warlike major to pastoral, even melancholy minor, from hard to soft hexachords in period terminology.

Of course, I’m taking care to provide appropriate word-painting, whenever the poetry calls for a gesture that can be imitated in music. Apollo’s first words Io che ne l’alto… (I, who on high…) naturally require a high note on alto, matching the actor’s upward extended right hand.

My next article will continue this theme of ‘How to remake Arianna’, with a detailed comparison between Monteverdi’s procedures in setting the libretto and the methodology I am evolving for this challenging (not to say, daunting) project!

It was Professor Carter, playing devil’s advocate, who first challenged my Arianna project with the question, “Why?”. Since then, he has been immensely generous with comments, guidance and historical information. Inevitably, we will disagree here and there, but this project could not succeed without him. Thank you, Tim.

ARIANNA a la recherche

At the end of September 2017, OPERA OMNIA will present the premiere of Andrew Lawrence-King’s remake of Monteverdi’s lost masterpiece, Arianna (1608), performed by the young professionals and advanced students of the International Baroque Opera Project at Moscow State Theatre ‘Natalya Sats’. Read more about the project here. Singers, continuo, instrumentalists and technical theatre specialists may apply to take part, here.

WHY remake Monteverdi’s Arianna?

Recalling the famous question, why climb Mount Everest, I’m tempted to answer for Arianna, “because it’s not there!”. All that survives of the original music is the famous Lamento, published for voice and continuo in 1623, also transcribed as a 5-voice madrigal and in religious contrafacta. As Tim Carter writes in Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre (2002), Monteverdi regarded Arianna, composed in Mantua the year after Orfeo, as his greatest work for the stage; he revived it as his first production for the public theatre in Venice (1640); it came closest to the via naturale alla immitatione, ‘the natural way to represent’ drama in music.

Arianna was by all accounts a huge success, and its central lament for the protagonist reportedly moved the ladies in the audience to tears.

Certainly, the construction of almost the entire opera is a formidable challenge, a musicological and artistic mountain to climb, with a huge pile of text to set, including a Prologue for Apollo and a virtuoso final aria for Bacchus, both sung by Francesco Rasi, who also sang the title-role in Orfeo. Any half-way decent setting will present a similar challenge to performers and an intriguing experience for audiences, as well offering irresistible grist to the mill of critics and musicologists.

So ARIANNA a la recherche attempts to set the famous Lament in context, with all due humility that the exercise of imitating Monteverdi can never be more than an exploration, an Essay in music, a baroque Versuch.

It is the task of the historian to create appropriate frames of reference within which Monteverdi’s works might plausibly have been viewed and understood by competent members of their first audiences. We are helped by various more or less obvious signposts in the works themselves; we are hindered by the unclear nature of early seventeenth-century theatrical and musical semiotics. Much hangs on the question of how precisely the music both informs and shapes our understanding….

Constructing meaning is an exercise both challenging and fraught with danger. But it is an essential part of the theatrical experience.

And the investigation of this ‘lost opera’ is a fascinating research project, following Professor Carter’s lead once again:

The longest chapter in [Monteverdi’s MusicalTheatre]concerns the ‘lost’ works, where Monteverdi’s music does not survive, for all that one can still say a good deal about it. In general, however, my approach tends to be less philosophical or aesthetic than pragmatic; I am not so much concerned with my own, or even Monteverdi’s grand statements as with the nuts and bolts of how a seventeenth-century musician might have written for, and worked within, the theatre.

Composing, rehearsing and performing a setting of Rinuccini’s libretto (which survives in several variant editions) is the ultimate practical investigation, a hands-on study that should complement traditional musicology and reveal new insights.

Treating Monteverdi’s operas … as being of and for the theatre does not diminish their stature.

The status of his operas as the first ‘great’ examples of the genre means that they are rarely studied in this more practical light: thus their careful design and even content made to suit his performers have not hitherto been fully appreciated. Not that these works suffer as a result; indeed, one is forced to recognise still more Monteverdi’s remarkable achievement as a man of the theatre.

It’s always possible that the publicity surrounding this ‘reconstruction’ might flush out of hiding an original source for Monteverdi’s setting, held perhaps by some private collector, or buried in some as yet un-catalogued archive. For performers and academics of the future, this would be a great result from our humble endeavour. And the investigatory effort would not be wasted: on the contrary, comparisons between original and reconstruction would reveal gaps in our knowledge and understanding.

Reverse-Engineering Arianna

Many of the world’s most inspiring teachers take the trouble also to study new disciplines, deliberately placing themselves at the other end of the teacher/pupil axis. For this, amongst other reasons, I began studying Tai Chi. In the academic study of any of the arts, the reverse side of the coin from analysis is creativity. Early Music, our discipline of Historically Informed Performance, is sometimes characterised as searching to understand and follow the composer’s intentions: the reverse of that process is to become the composer oneself, transforming the libretto not only into a musical score, but into a dramatic performance and an emotional experience for the audience.

In short, the journey ‘a la recherche’ of lost Arianna is empowered by the connections between Research, Training and Performance that define the theatrical mission of OPERA OMNIA, that have guided my academic and artistic work ever more strongly over the last decades. I hope that, in your different individual ways, you will be interested to join us on this unique journey.

[Pioneering musicologist, Nino] Pirrotta wished to dispel any lingering Romantic vision of Monteverdi as a transcendental genius, and the related claim that opera as a genre emerged fully formed and perfect in his hands. Rather, he sought to place the composer and his work for the theatre squarely in the context of his life and times. Monteverdi was a working musician… and his operas, for all their undoubted status as masterpieces, were the product of artistic struggle where problems were exposed and not always solved.

It was Professor Carter, playing devil’s advocate, who first challenged my Arianna idea with the question, “Why?”. Since then, he has been immensely generous with comments, guidance and historical information. All the musicological citations in this article are from Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre. Inevitably, we will disagree here and there, but this project could not succeed without him. Thank you, Tim.

So much for “Why?”. The next question is of course, “How?”. Watch for my next post!

On the occasion of the 50th performance in repertoire of Cavalieri’s Anima & Corpo in George Isaakyan’s production Игра о душе и теле at Moscow State Theatre ‘Natalya Sats’ [Golden Mask award-winner in 2013], this article offers a translation of the Preface to the 1600 print, in which the publisher, Alessandro Guidotti, presents Cavalieri’s advice on ‘how to create a baroque opera’. Published in association with OPERA OMNIAAcademy for Early Opera & Dance, read more here.

Emilio de Cavalieri’s ‘Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo’ (1600) is indeed the ‘first opera’. Jacopo Peri, whose ‘Euridice’ was performed later the same year, acknowledges Cavalieri’s role as originator of the style. (Earlier music-dramas by these two composers, notably Peri’s ‘Dafne’, have not survived.) So how did Cavalieri and his contemporaries seek to develop a new theatrical genre of fully-sung plays?

Guidotti’s original print with the full text of the Preface is available free online, here. More about Cavalieri’s music-drama here. Any (modern-day) debate about whether this work is ‘the first opera’ or ‘the first oratorio’ is icrrelevant, since neither genre existed in 1600. The original designation is Rappresentatione – a representation, a show. Cavalieri’s music-drama on a moral subject is the earliest surviving example of the genere rappresentativo: it is through-sung in three Acts with a spoken Prologue, two Sinfonias to separate the Acts and a final Ballo. We are very fortunate that this beautifully printed score was published, a sumptuous collector’s item for seicento music-lovers, as a souvenir of the original production.

The Preface has very little discussion of airy philosophy. This is a practical guide, drawing on Cavalieri’s long experience as a Corago (artistic director) for spectacular theatrical entertainments involving music. And clearly, in composing Anima & Corpo Cavalieri followed his own advice, so that his music-drama is a perfect example of how to put into practice the principles he recommends.

This practical approach is found again circa 1630 in the anonymous MS Il Corago, and the two sources are remarkably consistent in their advice. Framing the period of court ‘opera’ as they do [Venetian commercial opera began in 1737], these two practical guides give us a clear understanding of the working priorities for the first ‘operas’ by Peri, Caccini, Gagliano and Monteverdi as well as offering insight into Roman music-dramas.

I’ve chosen a simple style of translation that stays close to Guidotti’s vocabulary and word-order, so that it’s easy to check the English version against the original Italian. Difficult or old words, or words whose meaning has changed since 1600 have been been translated using John Florio’s 1611 Italian-English dictionary. So that readers can distinguish my comments from Cavalieri’s text, my commentary appears below in red.

One way to discover Cavalieri’s priorities is simply to count how often he mentions key words. Crucial concepts emerge clearly:

This supports the argument that seicento music favours contrast, emotion, and contrasts of emotion. The importance of specific emotions and of changes one from emotion to another differs subtly from the Romantic aim for intensity of emotion. Sometimes, modern-day coaches ask singers for ‘more emotion’, as if emotion itself were a quality, as if one could pour all-purpose emotion into a performance, like pouring sauce. But in this repertoire, a request for ‘more emotion’ begs the question: ‘which one?’. A more appropriate coaching method for seicento opera is to look for, and intensify changes between specific emotions.

Other words also recur frequently:

Recitando: with its derivatives, 6 hits

Gesture: gesti, motivi, 5 hits

Rappresentatione: with its derivatives 4 hits, plus 6 more mentions of specific genres of theatrical show

Ballo: together with the verb ballare and their derivatives, 18 hits, plus 7 more mentions of specific genres/dance types, plus many mentions of specific steps

Recitare must be understood in its period meaning: certainly not ‘to sing Recitative’, and usually not as specific as ‘to Recite’ [whether singing or speaking]. The principle meaning is ‘to Act’. It’s important to keep this distinction in mind, and to avoid the modern assumption that there is a musical genre of ‘Recitative’, which has different rules from ‘normal’ seicento music. Cavalieri is discussing how to act in a stage show, specifically in a stage show that is through-sung (what we nowadays call ‘opera’).

Three decades later, Il Corago defines acting as ‘imitating with gesture’, whether silent, spoken or sung. Gesture is a vital part of early seicento acting, but as Cavalieri reminds us (below), it comprises not only gestures of the hand but motivi of the whole body. Period ‘body language’ is described in exhaustive detail in Bonifaccio’s L’Arte de Cenni (Vicenza, 1600), my English translation will be published later this year. My introduction to historical acting for the first operas, Shakespeare etc starts here.

We should keep in the back of our minds the academic nicety that Cavalieri’s music-drama was not called ‘opera’, with all the anachronistic expectations that word arouses, but rappresentatione: a show. And it’s quite a surprise to see how significant dancing is in Italian music-drama, conventionally regarded as text-based and opposed to later French ideals of dance-dramas. But in the context of Cavalieri’s experience as overall artistic director, his triumph with the dance-finale to the 1589 Florentine Intermedi, his practical insistence on variety and lively entertainment for the audience, and comparisons with the later Il Corago MS, as well as the popularity of social dancing in this period, dancing emerges as vital theme, often undervalued, in the development of the ‘first operas’.

All these key words – contrast, passion, acting, gesture, theatrical shows, dancing – are encapsulated in the period phrase muovere gli affetti, ‘moving the passions’. Cavalieri’s practical guide is all about motion and E-motion.

TO READERS

If you want to present on stage this work or others similar to it, and follow the advice of Signor Emilio del Cavaliere, so that this type of music, which he has revived, moves [the listeners] to different passions, such as to pity and to joy; to crying and to laughter and to others similar, as has been seen to be effective in the modern scene of LaDisperatione di Fileno [The Despair of Fileno], composed by him, in which the acting of Signora Vittoria Archilei, whose excellence in music is very well known to all moved [the listeners] to tears marvellously, whilst the role of Fileno moved [them] to laughter:

Cavaliere is described as having ‘revived’, not ‘invented’ this type of music – dramatic monody, the representation in music of speech on stage. This reflects the period interest in re-discovering the power of emotional communication they had read about in classical Greek and Latin drama. The idea of ‘moving the passions… to tears and laughter’ is therefore a key topic.

As I say, if you want to put the show on, necessarily every element should be excellent: the singer should have a beautiful, well-pitched voice, they should keep the voice steady, they should sing with passion, piano and forte, without divisions (ornamentation) and in particular that they should pronounce the words well so that they [the words] are understood, and they should accompany them with gestures and motions not only of the hands, but of steps as well – these are most effective aids in moving the passion.

This advice for singers is an excellent check list of essential skills. Keeping the voice ‘steady’ encourages solid, well-supported voice-production and reminds us that vibrato is welcomed as an ornament, or a special effect, rather than as constant. Some early-music singers may be surprised to read that ornamentation is very restricted in this genre: passagi are prohibited, and cadential ornaments (discussed below) appear only infrequently. But Cavalieri’s restrictions on ornamentation are consistent with other sources, including Il Corago.

The instruments should be well played, and more or fewer in number according to the venue, whether a theatre or hall, which to be proportionate for this acting in music should not have a capacity of more than a thousand people, who should be comfortably seated, for greater silence and for their own satisfaction: since if you put on a show in a very large hall, it is not possible to make the words heard for everyone, and then it would be necessary for the singer to force, from which cause the passion is reduced; and so much music, lacking audible text, becomes boring.

Monteverdi’s Orfeo was played in a ‘small venue’, and most modern commentators are sceptical about period claims that Arianna had an audience of 6,000 Nevertheless, Cavalieri’s ideal venue is rather larger than the 400/500-seater chamber-music halls we sometimes think of as typical for early opera. And there is plenty more about large-scale ensembles below. But two important concepts from are already getting their second mention: no forcing (singers should even sing piano, when appropriate); it’s essential that the audience understands the words. And (singers take note!) in this repertoire passion is reduced if you sing too loud – as every actor knows, over-playing lines, shouting, generally ‘chewing the carpet’ just turns the audience off.

The need for the audience to be silent reminds us of the last stanza of the Prologue to Orfeo, in which La Musica calls on all nature (and by techniques similar to modern-day NLP, the audience too) to be still and silent. Read more about how La Musica hypnotises the heroes…

And the instruments, so that they are not seen, should be played from behind the backcloth of the scene, and by people who go along with the singer, without diminutions [ornamentation] and full [sound]. And to throw some light on those that have been useful in similar places, a lirone, a harpsichord, a chitarrone or theorbo as it is called, together make a really good effect: like also a soft organ with a chitarrone.

Cavalieri seems to seek the illusion that characters on-stage are just speaking, by hiding the instruments. In this period, the continuo ‘supports’ singers, ‘guiding’ the whole ensemble [Agazzari 1608, further discussion here], rather than ‘accompanying’ or ‘following’ in the modern sense [more about Monteverdi, Caccini & Jazz here]. Continuo-players should not add diminutions, but should play with full sound (to ‘support’ as Agazzari requires]. Many period sources ask the continuo to play grave.

Monteverdi also specifies organo di legno and theorbo in several places in Orfeo.

And Signor Cavaliere would praise changing instruments according to the passion of the actor; and he judges that similar music-dramas would not be good if they exceeded two hours, and should be divided up into Acts, and the characters should be dressed beautifully and with variety.

Changes of continuo instruments in Orfeo are according to the changing affetti: it’s not as simple as putting a certain instrument with each character (a solution sometimes favoured today).

Passing from one passion to another contrary, like from sad to jolly, from fierce to mild etc is enormously moving.

Cavalieri requires changes of emotion, and specific emotions – not just dollops of undifferentiated emotionality. And the importance of all kinds of contrast is beginning to emerge as a central principle.

When a soloist has sung for a bit, it’s good to sing some choruses, and to vary often the mode [tonality]; and that now the soprano sings, now bass, now contralto, now tenor: and that the rhythms and music should not be similar, but varied with many proportions [metres], which are Tripla , Sestupla [fast triple metre] and Binario [duple metre], and adorned with echos, and as many features [‘inventions’] as possible, like in particular [dances in varied metres], which bring these shows to life as much as possible, just as has been, in fact, the judgement of all the spectators;. and these Balli or Morescas if they can be made to appear out of the ordinary standard practice, they will have more beauty and novelty: like for example, the Moresca for a battle, and the Ballo based on a game or pastime: just like in La Pastorale di Fileno [The Pastoral of Fileno] three Satyrs came to battle, and based on this they did the battle singing and dancing on the Moresca ground. And in the game of La Cieca [Blind Man’s Buff] four Nymphs sang and danced, whilst they played around a blindfolded Amarilli, obeying the rules of the game of La Cieca.

Cavalieri calls for plenty of variety, contrast and novelty. He mentions Tripla and Sestupla, but not the slow triple-metre proportion of Sesquialtera [though all three triple-metres appear in Monteverdi’s Orfeo]. Given the strong correlation between the Preface and the music that follows, we would expect to find Tripla and Sestupla but not Sesquialtera when we realise Cavalieri’s notation of the proportional changes. My theory of proportions is supported by Cavalieri, some other modern-day theories are not. Read more about Monteverdi’s Time, here.

That’s certainly not to say that one shouldn’t do at the end with good reason a formal Ballo: but be well advised that the Ballo needs to be sung by the same [performers] who dance it, and with good reason to have instruments in their hands, which they themselves also play, for like this it will be more perfect and out of the ordinary, like that one which was put on by Signor Emilio in the great Comedy acted at the time of the wedding of the Most Serene Duchess of Tuscany in 1588.

The reference here is to Cavalieri’s spectacular success with the Ballo del Gran Duca, the finale to the Florentine Intermedi of 1589 [modern calendar]. There is more about performers simultaneously singing, dancing and playing below. The fact that singers simultaneously dance has implications for choice of dance steps and for proportions – leaping steps are impracticable for singers. See also this discussion of Cavalieri’s ideas applied to the Ballo in Monteverdi’s Orfeo.

When the composition is divided into three Acts, which according to experience gained should be sufficient, one would be able to add four fully-staged Intermedi, distributed so that the first would be before the Prologue, and each of the others at the end of its Act, observing this rule, that within the scene one makes small-scale music and a harmonious sinfonia of instruments, to the sound of which should be coordinated the movements of the Intermedio, having regard that there is no need for [sung or spoken] acting, as there would not be for example in showing the Giants who wanted to make war on Jupiter, or something similar.

Cavalieri’s term is intermedij apparenti – these include ‘sets and costumes, as well as recognisable narrative fragments, usually adapted from mythology; these are associated with the most spectacular of court entertainments… In contrast, intermedi non apparenti were far simpler, often consisting merely of a madrigal and performed without [changes of] costumes or sets.’ [Emily Wilbourne Seventeenth-Century Opera and the Sound of the Commedia dell’ Arte (University of Chicago, 2016, page 37)

The impression of seamless continuity given by the printed scores of Anima & Corpo and Orfeo is probably misleading: Cavalieri is recommending inserting Intermedi into this kind of three-act music-drama. But – an important point – since the drama itself is sung, the intermedi should avoid singing, whereas in a spoken drama such as La Pellegrina (Florence 1589), sung intermedi provide contrast as well as spectacle. Within Anima & Corpo itself, there are episodes (e.g. the entrance of Piacere and the Companions) that come close to being intermedi non apparenti. Indeed, the dramatic structure of the whole work, as a series of entrances, linked by the characters of Soul and Body whose story we follow [Intellect and Consiglio also make repeat appearances]

And in each [Intermedio] one could make that change of scenery appropriate to the theme of the Intermedio: which, it should be advised, would not be able to include descending from clouds [stage machines], which could not synchronise the movement with the tempo of the Sinfonia, which would happen beautifully when there are Moresca or other dance-steps.

In the Preface to La Dafne (1608), Gagliano advises singers to walk in time to the music of their Ritornelli. But nevertheless, this comment of Cavalieri’s is puzzling: when can a descending cloud be appropriate, since there will always be the difficulty of synchronising its movement to the accompanying music?

The libretto should not exceed 700 lines, and to be suitable it should be easy, and full of short lines, not just of 7 syllables, but of 5 and 8, and sometimes in sdruccioli [accent on the ante-penultimate syllable] and with close rhymes, through the beauty of the music it makes a graceful effect:

Cavalieri is arguing for relatively simple poetry – the music will supply whatever gracefulness that might be lacking. High-style poetry would be in 11 and 7 syllable lines, and close rhymes would be avoided. Again, Cavalieri’s preference is for entertaining variety.

And in the dialogues statements and replies should not be very long; and the narratives of one solo [character] should be as brief as possible. And there is no doubt that the variety of characters enriches the scene with great beauty; as is seen well observed in the Pastorals of Satiro and of La Disperatione di Fileno, which, conforming with the intentions of Signor Emilio, the most noble Signora Laura Guidiccioni, of the Luchesini, noble lady of Lucca was happy to write; she also took the game of La Cieca from Signor Cavalier Guarini’s Pastor Fido, adapting that noble spirit very beautifully for her own purpose.

Once again, Cavalieri argues for contrast and variety.

ADVICE FOR THIS PARTICULAR SHOW, FOR ANYONE WANTING TO HAVE IT ACTED IN SONG

Placed at the end [of the published book] are the words without music, and with numbers corresponding to those that are in the music, in order to make it easy to check the music, and from those numbers can be recognised the different scenes and the characters who speak alone and together. At the beginning, before the curtain falls, it will be good to do some full music with doubled voices and a great quantity of instruments: one could very well use the madrigal number 86, with the text O Signor santo & vero: which is in 6 parts.

Cavalieri’s earlier recommendation suggests that there would also be an Intermedio at the very beginning, presumably before this ‘full music’ that begins the music-drama proper.

As the curtain falls, the two youths who have to act the Prologue will be onstage: and after delivering their material, Tempo [Time] will appear, and the instruments who have to accompany the singers, putting the first chord will wait for him to make a start.

The continuo repeat the first chord until Tempo is ready to start. Monteverdi’s Ulisse has a similar introduction to a scene, and Il Corago also recommends the continuo to repeat the harmony if extra time is needed for stage action. This (I argue) is what is meant by the idea of accompanists going with the singer – they ‘vamp till ready’ when stage action requires it, but they do not ‘follow’ in the sense of breaking time, even if the singer chooses (temporarily) not to be on the beat. Monteverdi frequently notates the vocal line anticipating or delaying, over a continuo-bass that maintains Tactus, in the Preface to Le Nuove Musiche (1601) Caccini describes what seems to be the same practice, see here. Both practices (free vocal line over timed bass, and ‘vamp till ready’ maintaining steady rhythm) are standard practice in today’s jazz, whereas mainstream ‘classical’ music expects accompanists to follow singers by breaking time, in the tradition of circa 1910 rubato.

The Chorus should be onstage, some seated, some standing, getting to hear what is presented, and amongst them sometimes changing places and making movements; and when they have to sing, they stand up in order to make their gestures, and then they return to their places:

As any stage director knows, characters on-stage, even Chorus-members, must be active listeners to the drama. Period art gives an idea of gestures of reacting and listening.

And the music for the Chorus being in four parts, one can, if wanted, double them, singing now four, and another time [all] together, assuming the stage is large enough for eight.

This is consistent with our modern understanding that the default expectation in this period was one singer per part. Monteverdi’s Orfeo was first performed with about 8 singers taking all solo roles and singing the choruses.

It will be good if Piacere [Pleasure] with the two Compagni [Companions] have instruments in their hands, playing whilst they sing, and playing their ritornelli. One could have a chitarrone, the other a Spanish guitar, and the other a little tambourine with jingles in the Spanish style which make little noise, exiting then whilst they play the last ritornello.

The scene of Pleasure & Companions is musically charming, with lively alternations of Binario, Tripla and Sestupla from the trio, contrasted with comments from the Body and Soul in what we today call ‘Recitative’. Cavalieri’s recipe for simultaneous playing and singing brings the instruments on-stage, visible to the audience (remember that the continuo-group is hidden behind the back-cloth), and gives the scene the flavour of an intermedio within the second Act.

When Corpo [Body] says the words Si che hormai Alma mia and what follows, he could remove such vain ornament, like a gold necklace or a hairpin, or something else.

This crucial moment marks the denouement of Act I, the Body’s decision, after much questioning and introspection, to follow the lead of the Soul rather than seek for earthly gratification. As composer, Cavalieri draws attention to these words with a sudden change of pace and harmony; as corago he suggests an action that goes beyond the usual hand-gestures, to make a symbolic rejection of earthly vanity. Underlying this small item of advice are two profound concepts of seicento music-drama, which differ sharply from the approach of modern-day Regieoper [in which the stage director seizes the freedom to create whatever he wishes]: music and stage-action work in parallel to tell the same story; both music and action are based on the text of the libretto. These concepts are stated explicitly in the Preface to Monteverdi’s Combattimento di Tancredi & Clorinda here page 19, and also in the anonymous Il Corago MS, modern edition here. Il Corago explains that a corago [artistic director] has universal authority in the theatre, but must serve the poet’s text. Choice of text is therefore an important consideration for both Cavalieri [who was himself a corago] and for the anonymous c1630 writer.

Mondo [World] and Vita Mondana [Wordly Life] in particular should be very richly costumed: and when they are divested, they should show that great poverty and ugliness underneath those costumes: this shows the body of death.

At the moments where each of these characters is divested, the score does not provide any extra time for the necessary stage action. These are examples of where the continuo would ‘vamp till ready’, either on a single harmony, or on a chord sequence, as recommended by Il Corago. Notice that the extra time is ‘quantised’ – the continuo will remain in Tactus.

The Sinfonias and Ritornelli can be done with a great quantity of instruments: and a violin, which plays the soprano part precisely, will make a very good effect.

This advice seems to look back to the kind of varied consorts heard in the 1589 Florentine Intermedi, and reminds us that polyphonic ensemble music might be performed with diverse consorts of chordal and melody instruments, as well as with the more homogenous ensembles of melodic instruments that we know from Monteverdi’s 1607 Orfeo.

The ending can be done in two ways, with a Ballo or without: if you don’t want to do a Ballo, it should finish in eight parts with the line which is number 91, doubling the voices and instruments as much as possible: the verse goes Rispondono nel ciel scettri ecorone. If you want to finish with the Ballo, you should leave this verse unsaid, and starting to sing Chiostri altissimi e stellatithe Ballo starts with a reverence and continenza [dance step]: and then follow other passi gravi [steps, as opposed to jumps], with heys [the dancers weave around each other] and solemn steps for all the couples: in the ritornelli it’s done by four who dance exquisitely a jumping dance with capers and without singing: and like this it follows in all the stanzas with the dance always varying, one time galliard, another time canario, and another corrente, which in the ritornelli will come across very well. And if the stage is not large enough for four to dance, at least two should dance: and get this ballo choreographed by the best maestro that can be found.

The stanzas of the ballo should be sung tutti, on- and off-stage: and all possible instruments should be put into the ritornelli.

All this detailed advice throws light also on the ballo in Monteverdi’s Orfeo – Lasciate i monti – see here for further discussion.

PARTICULAR ADVICE FOR THOSE WHO WILL SING WHILST ACTING, AND FOR THOSE WHO WILL PLAY

In the vocal parts will be found sometimes written in front of some notes one of the four letters g m t z which mean that which is shown in the example below.

Like this, for whomever is singing, as for whomever plays, it will be warned never to alter flats to sharps or sharps to flats except where the particular signs are placed: and similarly this should be understood for the notes that are raised with the sharp sign #, that only those specifically marked with # should be raised, even if the note is repeated.

The use of barlines was quite different in this period, our modern convention that accidentals apply within the same bar does not apply. This should be kept in mind, if working with a modern edition that imposes barlines.

The small figures placed above the notes of the instrumental Basso Continuo signify the consonances and dissonances according to the figuring: like 3 third, 4 fourth, and so on. When the sharp # is placed before or below a figure, that consonance will be raised: and in this way the flat b makes its own effect. When the sharp is placed above the notes [of the Basso Continuo] without any figure, it always means a major tenth.

Some dissonances and parallel fifths are made deliberately.

Some dissonances that are resolved ‘incorrectly’ are disguised in notation (but not in sound). Such transgressions of the rules of counterpoint are frequent in the ‘first operas’ – this is the ‘artistic licence’ that Peri requests, in his Preface to Euridice (also 1600) see here. Contrary to modern assumptions, there is no implication of rhythmic freedom.

The sign .S. means coronata [the ‘crowned’ symbol, looking like a modern fermata sign], which is used to take breath and give a bit of time to make some gesture.

As in polyphonic music of this period, time for breathing (and gesture) is taken out of the last note of the phrase, maintaining the Tactus and starting the next phrase on time. The ‘fermata’ sign derives from the renaissance signum congruentiae, showing a consonance at the end of a phrase. In this period, the sign carries no implication of prolonging the note or breaking time: on the contrary, the assumption is that the note marked by this sign will be shortened, by default to approximately half-length.

The title of this article cites the libretto, the end of the first speech of Time: ‘opri con la man’, opri co’l core’. The meaning of the Italian is ‘act with the hand, act with the heart’, but in the sense of ‘do good works’ – operare is cognate with ‘operate’. But since period acting links passions to gestures of the hand, it is not inappropriate to read into this line a reference (whether or not intended by the librettist) to historical stage-craft.

Piae Cantiones – music of half a millenium before 1582 – performed by Helsinki’s Utopia Chamber Choir at the Saksalainen Kirkko on Saturday 3rd December, 2016.

Piae Cantiones (Spiritual Songs), the first Finnish music ever to be printed, was published in Greifswald in 1582 under the direction of Theodoricus Petri Rutha, a Finnish student matriculated at nearby Rostock University. The songs and texts were edited by Jaakko Suomalainen, also known as Finno, Headmaster of the Cathedral School at Turku, who also published the first Finnish hymnal. But although many of the texts are on religious themes, the Piae Cantiones songs are not hymns, they represent a varied repertoire sung as extra-curricular entertainment for the Turku students. The styles range from the lively dance-rhythms and catchy refrains of Gaudete, and the cool renaissance counterpoint of Jesu dulcis memoria to the austere restraint of chant-like melody in Angelus emittitur, the first song in the book.

In 1616, Hemminki Maskulainen published a Finnish translation of the song-texts in Stockholm, but without music.

A second musical edition, published in 1625 by two scholars from Viipuri, former Rostock University students, was edited by Daniel Friderici, cantor at the church of St Mary’s, Rostock. A celebratory facsimile of the 1582 print was published in Helsinki in 1967. The songs heard this evening were transcribed from the original 16th-century notation by Mats Lillhannus, with additional work by Valter Maasalo and Andrew Lawrence-King. Many modern editions transpose the songs freely, for the convenience of church choirs, but we have chosen to perform each song according to the original clefs. Some songs are notated for high voices in treble or soprano clefs; others are written in tenor or baritone clef. Psallat scholarum concio in hoc convivio begins in bass clef, on what is in theory the lowest note of the medieval hexachord system, low G or Gamut, from where it descends! We can perhaps imagine a gang of older students (scholarum concio) singing and playing instruments (psallere means to sing psalms, or to play a psalm-inspired instrument, such as a psaltery, or King David’s harp) at a Christmas party (convivio).

A selection from Piae Cantiones was published in England in the winter of 1853-1854 as Carols for Christmas and Eastertide with English texts, and in 1910 England’s Plainsong & Medieval Music Society published an edition of the whole book with the original Latin texts. These carols became highly popular, and many were republished in 1961 as Carols for Choirs, leading to countless performances on the model of the famous service of Nine Lessons of Carols from King’s College, Cambridge. Across the entire English-speaking world, singers and Christmas revellers would be amazed to discover that many of their favourite ‘traditional’ carols, including the melody of Good King Wenceslas, come from 16th-century Finland! Nevertheless, the Piae Cantiones are not limited to Christmas carols, but also include texts for Passiontide, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday; meditations on the Eucharist and prayers; songs ‘of the fragile and miserable human condition’, of scholastic life and of harmonious society; epic verse and spring-time lyrics.

The story of how melodies and texts from Piae Cantiones inspired composers from Praetorius in 17th-century Germany to Willcocks and Rutter in 20th-century England could itself make a fascinating subject for a concert, but that is not our purpose this evening. One might present the whole collection according to the historical performance practice of 1582, but this too is not our intention. Most of the songs Finno edited had been passed down through aural traditions for many centuries, before appearing in print in the late 16th-century. Divinum mysterium (a mediation on the Eucharist) dates back to the 10th century, much of the collection is from the 14th-century. The book could well be compared to an archaeological site, with layers of material from various centuries, and considerable mixing between the layers. So our performance approach varies too, according to the origin of the music: medieval, renaissance, even some early baroque settings from the 1625 print.

Turku Cathedral

Some Piae Cantiones songs are of Finnish or other Nordic origin. Cedit hiems, a celebration of the end of winter, is found in many Finnish sources. Other texts and melodies come from all parts of Europe, particularly Bohemia. There is ample evidence that Turku was a significant academic centre, with connections not only in renaissance Rostock, but also in medieval Paris with its great university and the circle of composers associated with the cathedral of Notre Dame. This same international network of scholars and musicians facilitated experiments with new styles of polyphony, with liturgical drama and student plays, and with the high-status musical instruments of the Middle Ages: harp, psaltery and organ.

Many of the Cantiones began as medieval Tropes. As a mnemonic for melismatic chant, with a single syllable sustained over several long phrases in the music, monks would invent extended texts. Thus Kyrie… e… e… eleison (Lord have mercy) becomes Kyrie fons bonitatis Pater ingenite, a qua bona cuncta procedunt: eleison. (Lord, fount of goodness, Father uncreated, from whom all good things proceed: have mercy). Such tropes then became established texts, for which new music would be written. And then the additional music would be troped again, creating extended textual and musical Sequences. Divinum mysterium first developed as a trope of the Sanctus, sung at the most sacred moment of the Eucharist, during the Prayer of Consecration. Congaudeat is a trope of the final versicle and response at Mass: Benedicamus Domino / Deo gratias (Let us bless the Lord / Thanks be to God). Similarly, Puer Natus ends with Benedicamus Domino, alleluia. Laudetur Sancta Trinitas. Deo dicamus gratias, alleluia. (Let us bless the Lord, alleluia! Let us praise the Holy Trinity. Let us say, thanks be to God, alleluia!)

In the 9th-century monastery of St Gall, Notker and Tuotilo added such tropes to Alleluias and Kyries and created a Book of Sequences. In England, Salisbury Cathedral preserved an ancient ritual tradition that included many extended tropes. Laus Virginis Nati and the other Sequences in Piae Cantiones represent the high-point of Finnish medieval artistry, but are rarely performed today. Music and text present varied rhythms, harmonies and melodies, each phrase being repeated to a parallel text. The energy builds up in a succession of peaks, marked by the urgent rhythms of very short lines of poetry, sometimes just a single syllable: Audi nos / dos / honoris et flos/ inter florum (Hear us,/ Gift / of honour & Flower/ of flowers). ‘Rose of roses, Flower of flowers’ are medieval titles for the Virgin Mary, but in those early days of the Reformation, Jaakko Finno rewrote many medieval texts to praise Jesus instead.

Although the 1582 book presents most of the music as a single melody line, medieval singers would have improvised organum – instrumental style – with drone basses, parallel fifths, varied melodies and standard cadence-formulae. In the 15th-century, a sonorous texture of rich harmonies in thirds and sixths was imported into France from the ancient styles of the Celtic fringes of the British Isles. This contenance angloise (English manner) offered improvising students an entirely new way to harmonise such popular melodies as In Dulci Jubilo.

The two- and three-part settings in Piae Cantiones are in polyphonic styles much older than the few, 16th-century four-part songs. Zachaeus is a roundelay, in which two equal voices swap melodies from phrase to phrase. The accompanying voice of Puer Natus became an independent melody, which later triumphed in popularity over what was originally the principal voice. These medieval examples served as a model for the Turku students’ improvised polyphony, and for ours. Elsewhere in the collection, there are the processional and dance rhythms of medieval conductus poetry, with verses in strong, regular accentual metres (ideal for improvised polyphony). Songs like this were ‘cut and pasted’ into the New Year music-drama of the circa 1200 Ludus Danielis (Play of Daniel), an all-night party inserted into the cathedral service of Mattins as a liturgical ‘opera’. In Piae Cantiones, multiple re-tellings of the Christmas story hint at miniature dramatisations, with students playing the familiar roles of Angel, Shepherds & Magi (not to mention the Ox and Ass).

In the final Historical Song Ramus virens, Jaako records a fragment of Finnish national Epic, with a stirring refrain calling on the People of Finland to celebrate their conversion to Christianity. The story begins with a metaphor of Noah’s Ark finding dry land after the great Flood: an Englishman, Bishop Henry lands in Finland on his way to Uppsala. Henry and the saintly King Eric of Sweden subdue the pagan demons, but Henry is martyred. ‘So, rejoice, people of Finland!’ Other accounts of Henry’s story, in the secular metre of pre-Christian Kalevala poetry, name Henry’s murderer as Lalli, who ends up ‘skiing in Hell’. He is the first Finn to be known by name.

Obviously, the story of Noah’s Flood resonates strongly in a country of lakes and swamps, but the poetic imagery also recalls the creation scene in the Kalevala, in which Ilmatar creates dry land from endless water, as well as the biblical creation story in the Book of Genesis. And the frontispiece of Piae Cantiones shows a harpist, perhaps Theodoricus Petri himself, kneeling by the rivers of Rostock, with an angel-choir, presumably improvising heavenly harmonies. We are reminded of Psalm 137 ‘By the rivers of Babylon’ and of the Christmas angel, suddenly joined by a multitude of the heavenly host to sing the Gloria, in the Gospel of St Luke. Petri’s guardianship of the aural tradition of scholastic songs is proclaimed in a verse from Psalm 89: cantabo in generatione & generationem (I will sing from one generation to another). This echoes the opening and closing cantos of the Kalevala, which are both sung ‘nuorisossa nousevassa / kansassa kasuavassa’ (amongst the young people growing up, for the folk of the future).

As Finns celebrate Christmas in renaissance Rostock and modern Helsinki; as ancient legends unite the Hanseatic ‘East Sea’ with Britain, far out in the western Atlantic; as timeless melodies intrigue modern scholars and offer medieval students (and Utopia’s singers) opportunities for daring improvisation; the simple joy and authentic tradition of music and words in Piae Cantiones still appeals, like Christmas itself, across the generations, and to the child in each of us.

My first encounter with the earliest surviving Spanish opera, Celos, aun del aire matan (1660) was a concert performance in Vienna in 2001 with (mostly) Spanish singers directed by Jordi Savall, and sung in the original Spanish. In the same festival, The Harp Consort performed the Spanish and South American dances of Ribayaz’s Luz y norte (1677). Since then, I have directed the first productions of Celos in UK (2003) and (last night) in Russia with local singers. All these projects necessarily involved some kind of translation of Calderón’s verse drama, for the audience and/or for performers.

In Vienna, it was assumed that singers understood the libretto. Indeed, Calderón’s vocabulary is not difficult for native speakers. But behind the mostly simple choice of words lies a wealth of hidden meaning, historical and cultural references. English speakers might well make a comparison with Shakespeare’s plays: we probably understand nearly all the words, but there is much that we will fail to grasp without further study. For that concert performance, there was insufficient rehearsal time for detailed text work with the singers, or for detailed work on Hidalgo’s quicksilver Hispanic rhythms. [Jordi subsequently captured those rhythms marvelously in the on-going Folias Criollas project, in which he directs the combined forces of Hesperion XXI and Ensemble Tembembe (Mexico)]. The Viennese audience were provided a German-language translation to follow, but it is fair to say that performers and audence alike were largely baffled by Calderón and Hidalgo’s masterpiece.

In Sheffield, we had the advantage of a production team already familiar with Torrejon’s setting of Calderón’s (1659) libretto, La púrpura de la rosa (1701). [Hidalgo’s earlier setting is lost, though some of his music survives in Torrejon’s work.] Some of our English singers were fluent Spanish-speakers, and with a student cast we had plenty of time for painstaking language and text work, coached by university lecturer Dr Anthony Trippett. For my own study, and to assist the singers, I made a line-by-line English translation. This translation was not a thing of beauty; it was very dry, often clunky, but it did serve its purpose of helping us all understand Calderón’s words. Of course, this is only the first step towards understanding the libretto’s deeper meaning, and those more profound discussions continued throughout the production, and over the years afterwards. I translated the entire libretto, and then made cautious and carefully considered cuts to reduce the running time to manageable proportions, whilst preserving plot, musical forms and poetic structures.

Meanwhile, the head of the university’s Spanish department, Prof Nick Round dedicated many hours of his free time to making a singable English translation. We did not use this in performance, but Nick’s work sparked off a lively debate about the purposes and priorities of translation. Of course, there can never be a perfect translation: every translator has to make difficult, sometimes heart-breaking choices between dry accuracy and poetic beauty; between sound and meaning; between metre and fidelity to the original; between familiar idioms in the local language and exotic, even alienating, literal renditions; between the author’s and translator’s different poetical aesthics. Any singable translation faces the formidable challenges of doing all this and matching words to music. [See Andrew Porter’s fascinating introduction to his singing translation of Wagner’s Ring here].

To help the English-speaking audience follow Calderón’s complex plot, in which interwoven myths are told and retold in unexpected manner, whilst goddesses, heroes and idiots interact as main action and comic sub-plots collide, we introduced onto the stage an additional character, the poet himself. Our Pedro gave linking commentaries in English between scenes, and even during the most confusing scene (in which the clown, Rústico, is transformed into a bewildering sequence of different animals). I created Pedro’s texts in verse, matching Calderón’s metre and assonance (rhythming of vowels) with the surrounding Spanish poetry. But of course, I was not translating, merely summarising; and there was no demand to fit my content into a given number of lines. Apart from the self-inflicted technical challenge of imitating romance verse, my priority was clarity: the purpose of these speeches was to ensure that the audience would understand the story.

Yet another translation project ran in parallel: Tony Trippett worked on polished renditions of Calderón’s many refrain texts, repeated mottos that recur frequently during the drama: “A woman can be constant, without being cruel”; “Long live Love, death to Neglect”; and of course, “Jealousy, even of the air, kills”, the title of the opera, a refrain which is sung many times during the final Act. Posters with these texts in English and Spanish were posted around the public areas of the performance venues, to give audience members a chance to reflect on some of Calderón’s most thought-provoking pronouncements. Since then Tony and I have worked on several other Spanish Early Music projects, including the first Spanish Oratorio (1704) and Passion (1706), and we continue to discuss the aesthetics and practicalities of opera translation.

This season’s production in Russia is staged by the Moscow State Opera & Ballet Theatre, Natalya Sats. This is a theatre for families and young people, the original home of Peter and the Wolf, where Georgy Isaakian presents an enormous repertory ranging from popular classics (Nutcracker, Carmen) to award-winning productions of serious and challenging works (Love of Three Oranges, Rappresentatione di Anima e Corpo). Where else in the world could one perform baroque opera to an audience packed with teenagers and twenty-somethings?

In this context, it was a given that Celos would be sung in Russian. This reflects the early baroque priority that every word should be understood by the audience, but the technical task for translators is enormous. Calderón’s Spanish libretto uses mostly short simple words, which are often highly compressed by multiple elisions, packing lots of meaning into very few syllables. The Russian language tends towards longer words, with many more syllables required to express the same thought. And whilst Calderón’s words are often simple, he loads those ‘easy’ words with multiple layers of hidden meaning and added significance. He also repeats key words throughout the drama, making subtle cross-connections between different scenes and characters – connections which should be preserved in translation. As dialogue between characters gathers pace, he often splits a single line of verse between two or three speakers, with quick-fire question and answer.

Floreta ¿Qué haces?

Clarín Huyo.

Floreta Oye, espera.

Coro Guarda la fiera.

Floreta ¿Qué haré?

Coro Guarda la fiera.

Floreta ¡Lindo consuelo!

Floreta What are you doing?

Clarín Running away.

Floreta Hey, wait!

Coro Watch out for the beast!

Floreta What shall I do?

Coro Watch out for the beast.

Floreta Nice idea!

So the first challenge is to fit so much meaning into just a few syllables, line-by-line.

Hidalgo’s Spanish baroque musical style is based on the lively rhythms of popular songs and dances, accompanied by strumming guitars, harps and percussion. There is a lot of triple metre, rocking to and fro between hemiola and tripla, and many, many syncopations. The basic pattern accents the second beat of the bar. This requires the translator to match Calderón’s metric patterns of Good and Bad syllables very closely indeed, on almost every syllable of every line.

Pocris, for whom I die/ Aura for whom I live. Here, a translator has not only to translate line by line and metrically, but also preserve the balance and contrast of the verse-pair.

But perhaps the most difficult challenge of all is Calderón’s refrain texts, the famous mottos. These recur, and must be translated consistently. But Hidalgo sets them polyphonically, with rhythmic variants in different voices. And sometimes he sets the same motto text to a completely different melody, even in a different metre. Tony Trippet’s polished English motto-translations were not singable – this was not his purpose. But for our Russian production, we had to render the mottos not only consistently, but line-by-line, metrically, and as elegantly as possible, whilst ensuring that the same text would work for all Hidalgo’s varied settings of it. It had already been decided that the opera would be presented under the adapted, short title Любовь Убивает (Love Kills). But the title is sung many times during Act III, as the final words of one of Calderón’s motto-refrains, so we also had to reconcile the original meaning with the chosen short title.

Both Calderón and Hidalgo employ varying registers (literary, and musical) for the noble and comic characters, who often interact in the same scene. Whilst seeking to imitate Calderón’s simplicity of language throughout, Katerina Antonenko-King also sought to match his shifts in register, with more elegant vocabulary or rougher words, according to the character of each role. At appropriate moments, Calderón even introduces poetic cliches and homespun phrases:

Aura me hiela y me abrasa,

Aura makes me freeze and burn.

¡Y luego dirán que no hay

a perro viejo tustuses!

And then they’ll say that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks! This approximate English translation demonstrates the point: a literal translation would be unfamiliar, hard to understand, and certainly wouldn’t create the laugh that Calderón is trying for.

Our absolute priority, in line with historical aesthetics, was that the audience should understand the words. This required us to choose the simplest possible words for the required meaning, just as Calderón himself did. Hidalgo’s music required us to preserve the original meaning line-by-line, and the original metre syllable by syllable. Calderón’s mottos required especial care. We made a deliberate choice to avoid antiquarian language, to adopt a modern idiom that would be understood by our young audience. Nevertheless, we respected Calderón’s careful variation in poetic register, from elevated speech for the gods to rough barking from the clown. Sometimes these multiple demands were simply irreconcilable: where necessary, we made small changes to the music, in order to set the best possible Russian text. In this too, we followed the historical aesthetic, that in this style, the music is the servant of the words.

Katerina and I worked together. She is responsible for the Russian, as well as for some literary insights into Calderón’s witty treatment of the ancient myths. My duty was to care for Calderón’s Spanish and Hidalgo’s music (in that order of priority). Our work is not perfect: no translation can be perfect. But we approached the task with a clear set of priorities, in order to give audiences the best possible understanding of the drama as it happens before their eyes, and the best possible experience of the rhythms of Spanish music, as they listen. No doubt some readers of Calderón in flowery literary translations will be disappointed by the simplicity of language required for effective communication on stage: they might even be disappointed by the original, for Calderón was a master of elegant simplicity:

Esta, hermosa Diana … es Aura

“This, beautiful Diana… is Aura.” So Calderón begins his complex drama by introducing the two protagonists, in Spanish that would not trouble a first-year student. Katerina rendered this as “Это, царица Диана … та Аура” [Eto, czarina Diana… ta Aura] “This, queen Diana… that’s Aura]. Even with my limited Russian, I can understand this, and the opening word Это matches the original Esta almost perfectly.

I look forward to observing how our young (and not so young) audiences react to the show. So far, Calderón’s earthy humour has raised genuine belly-laughs, and his tragic drama has inspired strong emotions: if we can acheive this, we have succeeded.

Of course, there is another kind of translation, which we have chosen not to attempt. A fine poet can create in his own language a parallel work, not a slavish translation, but a re-imagining of the original in another language, in another culture, in another aesthetic. Such a work can be a thing of great beauty, but it would not meet the requirements of this particular production. I consider that the role of opera translators is not to present their own gusto, but rather, like a fine actor, to take on the mantle of the original author and convey his, perhaps different, aesthetic. In the 18th century, there was a fashion to ‘improve’ Shakespeare with flowery, more ‘elegant’ language: I do not believe that we should translate 17th-century opera libretti in this way.

After all, the world’s most famous line of 17th-century verse encapsulates the existential dilemma almost entirely in monosyllables:

To be, or not to be – that is the Question

Who could ever improve on such elegant simplicity? On the other hand, who would ever want to be faced with translating Hamlet into modern Russian, whilst preserving syllable by syllable every metrical twist of Shakeseare’s iambic pentameters??? Something is always lost in translation: the translator’s choice is what to attempt to preserve.

How can singing a drama ever be ‘realistic’? This was the challenge facing the composers of the first operas, in Italy around 1600 and in Spain sixty years later. The Peace of the Pyrenees, which in 1659 ended the war between France and Spain, was sealed by the marriage of the Spanish Infanta, Maria Teresa to King Louis XIV of France. For the wedding celebrations in Madrid, the Marquis of Eliche produced two operas, the first fully-sung Spanish music-dramas:L a púrpura de la rosa (‘The Blood of the Rose’ lost, but later revived in Peru with music by Torrejón), and the following year, Celos, aun de aire, matan (Jealousy, even of the Air, Kills) which we now present on the Russian stage under the title Love Kills. Both operas were set by harpist and composer Juan Hidalgo to libretti by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, defining a new Spanish genre. Their fiesta cantada (sung celebration) was quite different from the Italian stilo rappresentativo of Cavalieri’s Anima e Corpo, as well as from the Lully’s French comédie-ballet.

The first Italian operas imitate the rhythms and pitch-contours of serious, rhetorical speech in what we nowadays call Recitative. But within the Spanish tradition of realistic theatre, down-to-earth humour and popular songs established by Lope de Vega’s life-mirroring comedies, Calderón and Hidalgo sought alternative styles of representing everyday speech in music. The rhetorical artificiality of Recitative was suitable for gods and goddesses, but ordinary people should speak in a more natural style, and comic characters should have funny music for their skits. They found their solution in the Spanish tradition of story-telling ballad-songs with many strophes to the same tune, the famous and still-popular romances quoted and parodied in Cervantes’ Don Quijote (1615).

Hidalgo sets everyday speech to newly-composed strophic melodies – tonos humanos (secular tunes) – accompanied by a typically Spanish ensemble of guitars, harps and percussion. Spanish lyric traditions favoured refrain forms, encouraging Hidalgo to assemble elaborate musical structures from these simple, catchy tunes. In the first scene, he weaves together a martial tune for the heroine Pocris and a slow lament-refrain for her prisoner, Aura (guilty of the crime of Love) with the comments of the chorus. These tonos contrast with the goddess Diana’s recitative, and Aura’s cry for help, a dramatic invocation of all creation. As the hero, Cefalo comes to the rescue and confronts the goddess, the composer introduces a new sequence of tono and recitative.

Aura’s lover, Erostrato, encounters Diana’s gardiner, Rústico (literally ‘village idiot’, the traditional name for a theatrical clown). Rústico recounts the story so far, but in comic style: Hidalgo sets this to a popular song-and-dance tune, the seguidilla. The ensuing conversation, and Diana’s interrogation of Rústico’s wife, Floreta, are set to the next tono, alternating between duple and triple rhythms. But the music changes as Diana punishes Rústico by turning him into various wild animals. Cefalo comes to the rescue again, and under Aura’s influence, he and Pocris fall in love, to the sweet music of yet another tono and refrain. As the villagers gather outside Diana’s temple for the new moon celebrations, Cefalo’s servant, the cynical Clarín has his chance to summarise the plot, another comic song-and-dance number set to the low-style street-music of the xácara.

Calderón’s dramaturgy is also compounded from several elements. The mythological tragedy of Pocris, destined to be killed by her lover, Cefalo, is combined with the history of Eróstrato, destined to lose his identity after burning down the temple of Diana, and contrasted with the low comedy of Rústico (who also loses his identity), Floreta (attacked by her husband) and the anti-hero, Clarín. Poetical refrain-structures allow Calderón to emphasise certain mottos: Aura is transformed from condemned ‘victim of love’ to the gently inspiring ‘aura of Love’; she then changes Diana’s hymn ‘Death to Love’ into ‘Death to Indifference’. Another motto advises how to be ‘constant but not cruel’, and affirms that ‘love cannot be driven out by hate’. We hear many times that ‘if you are jealous of the air, jealous love kills’ and of course the hunters keep shouting “follow the beast!”. Cefalo is ‘dying for Pocris, living for Aura’, and both he and Erostrato ‘burn and freeze’ with passion. The final motto is wise advice to the young Infanta, about to marry a notorious womaniser: ‘although vengeance seems noble, once achieved, it disappoints’.

The incidental music in this production represents the Spanish baroque tradition of diferencias – improvised variations on popular dances, amongst them the famously wild folias. Like Hidalgo’s tonos, this instrumental music is structured as theme-and-variations or verses-and-refrain, in the lively, syncopated rhythms of Iberian and Latin-American dances. This blend of high art and popular traditions complements Calderón’s mix of tragedy and comedy to create a music-drama that remains highly relevant today, with its entertaining but profound exploration of how young people might manage questions of personal identity and emotions of jealousy and love.

Updated May 25th 2016 – please revisit this page for further updates, or LIKE our Facebook page here to receive updates automatically.

Art, crown, refreshment, heavenly language, pleasure of gods and men – all these speak to me in words!

The Perfect Musical Director

No, before I’m drowned out with howls of derision, that’s not me! Rather it’s Johann Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister (Hamburg, 1739). Mattheson’s weighty tome is a key source for baroque performance practice, pre-dating the three great Essays of the 1750s (CPE Bach, Quantz & Leopold Mozart).

The book is famous, famously long, and famously long-winded: how many of us have read it all through? I confess that I hadn’t, and so now I’ve started. My personal selection and summary of Mattheson’s ideas will be posted in progressively updated versions of this post, with extended commentary in future postings.

Opera, orchestra, vocal & ensemble director and early harpist, Andrew Lawrence-King is director of The Harp Consort and of Il Corago, Principal Guest Director of Concerto Copenhagen, and visiting director for modern and baroque orchestras throughout Europe and Scandinavia. Awards include the Golden Masque (Russia’s highest music-theatre prize) for baroque opera, the USA Handel Society Prize for best opera CD, and the German Echo Prize for baroque orchestral concertos. He is also Director of Baroque Opera and Historical Action at the Moscow State Theatre ‘Natalya Satz’.

From 2011 to 2015 he was Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Australian Research Council Centre for the History of Emotions. He is now preparing a translation of Bonifacio’s (1616) Art of Gesture and a book on The Theatre of Dreams: The Science of Historical Action.

In this article the focus is on the Tactus Hand itself, on the practicalities of embodying a mystic concept that links everyday music-making with the divine power of the cosmos. And we should not underestimate that power, since, for renaissance and baroque musicians, the Tactus Hand was the Hand of God made visible in microcosm.

Tactus in the 1980s

Since the 1980s, as co-director of ensemble Tragicomedia and in my own teaching and directing, I have frequently used a simple arm-waving exercise to give participants a practical experience of Tactus. I emphasise the significance of a two-way motion with a sense of ‘swing’, as opposed to the hammering effect of a one-way beat. I recommend using the entire arm, a long pendulum for a slow swing. And already in those days, I noticed that this kind of Tactus work brought to the group a special atmosphere of calm and concentration. After just a minute or so of beating Tactus, the room seems quieter, each of us more aware of small sounds and as a group, better able to find a united sense of rhythm and timing.

In my own playing, I notice that keeping my mind on the Tactus allows me to stay calm, even in demanding fast passage-work. No matter how fast my fingers need to move, my inner focus is on that slow swing: even the fast bits still feel slow and steady. Working with singers, I encourage them to feel the embodied power of the Tactus, to realise that they could hold the entire ensemble in their own hands, and to feel (like a physical weight) the responsibility that this entails. The Tactus-movement can’t be a trivial flip of the wrist, it needs the gravity of a long, weighty pendulum.

George Houle’s most useful survey of Metre in Music: 1600-1800 was published in 1987, though I didn’t come across it until many years later. Houle wondered what a tactus-directed ensemble would sound like: my work ever since has been devoted to answering that question.

Since the 1990s, with my own ensemble, The Harp Consort, we continue to apply Tactus to many different repertoires, to Spanish dances in Luz y Norte, to German high baroque in Italian Concerto, to the medieval Ludus Danielis and the first South American opera, La púpura de la rosa, to folk-music from Guernsey, Les Travailleurs de la Mer, to Purcell’s theatrical and chamber music in Musick’s Hand-Maid, to medieval popular songs Les Miracles de Notre Dame and Latin-American religious music, Missa Mexicana. In these and many other projects, Tactus is the organising principle that unites the whole ensemble in music, dance and improvisation.

Tactus in the 2010s

In this current decade, with my renewed focus on early opera, Tactus has been a key concept in the award-winning Text, Rhythm, Action!program of international research, experiment, training and performance. I’ve re-opened the investigation of Tactus in the context of the Historical Science of Time itself, and applied the latest research findings to my work on Baroque Gesture and Historical Action. Fascinating connections have emerged: the 18th-century love of fermata and cadenza seems to match the contemporaneous fashion for striking Attitudes on the theatrical stage.

David Garrick as Richard III in 1759

Some findings would seem glaringly obvious, but have previously escaped attention. Monteverdi, Shakespeare and their contemporaries circa 1600 did not share our present-day intuitive understanding of Absolute Time: that idea was introduced in Newton’s Principia (1687). The seicento concept of Time was Aristotelian, depending on movement to define ‘before’ and ‘after’. In music, that movement is embodied in the Tactus Hand.

Gradually, I’ve been able to reach a more refined understanding of Tactus as Time, Tactus as Movement, with the goal of applying all that pre-Newtonian philosophy to down-to-earth practicalities. How do we move our hands to create Tactus, and what does it mean?

For Italian music around the year 1600, the Tactus hand is indeed like a pendulum, swinging for about one second each way (i.e. two seconds for the complete there-and-back-again). The complete (reciprocal) movement corresponds to a semibreve, so each individual (one-way) beat corresponds to a minim, at approximately minim = 60. Of course, in Monteverdi’s day, although there were clocks that ticked approximate seconds accurate to about 15 minutes per day, clocks were not capable of defining those seconds accurately. So Tactus Time is only as accurate as you can humanly make it.

The precise Quantity of Time therefore can’t be defined: rather Tactus relies on each musician to remember how it feels, to recall the Quality of Time. So try these tests: can you remember the sound of a ticking clock? How fast does it tick (according to your memory)? Can you recall the speed of some particular piece of music that you’ve often performed with the same team? How accurately can you estimate a one-second pulse? If you hear a church clock strike noon, how good is your estimate of 1215?

Of course, nowadays, you can check your estimates against Absolute Time (well, at least against a digital stopwatch!). But the point of these experiments is to get used to the idea that

You are trying to feel the right Time

This is very different from the modern musical practice of performers choosing their own time. Seicento tempo is not a matter of personal choice!. You would not get much sympathy if you turned up late for rehearsal, saying “Although most people take it faster, in my interpretation, it is not yet 10 o’clock.” Toby Belch, in Shakespeare’s As you like it (1603) makes a similar connection between good time-keeping in everyday life (‘to go to bed betimes’) and keeping time in music. In reply to Malvolio’s accusation that he shows no respect of time, he retorts that ‘we did keep time, sir, in our catches’ (witty part-songs).

Your estimate of time will naturally be influenced by your surroundings and your own state of mind: if you are in a hectic mood, you might err on the fast side; if you are feeling particularly relaxed, you might err on the slow side. If you play a piece of music in a generous acoustic, you might play it slower; in a dry acoustic, you might play it faster to get the same feeling.

The precise Quantity cannot be defined – you are trying to find the right Quality

Fixing Tactus at the order of magnitude of one second (for C time in Italian seicento: in other repertoires, there are significant pulse-rates somewhat faster at approx 80 beats per minute or somewhat slower at around 45 bpm) does not imply a ‘metronomic’ performance. There is room inside that slow, steady minim beat for the subtle difference between Good and Bad syllables (in crotchets) or the dance-like swing of French inegalite (in quavers). There are also symmetries on longer time-scales, and good musicians will be sensitive to these too. Nevertheless, Tactus provides a particular time-scale, a calibration that synchronises musical notation with real-world time, with physical movement, and with the human body. That time-scale is approximately one second, corresponding to a pendulum-length of approximately one metre, which is approximately the length of an outstretched arm (measured to the centre of the body).

Narrowing down the historical sense of musical time to an order of magnitude might not seem like much progress towards the question of “what is the historical tempo for Monteverdi’s Orfeo?”. But even this very approximate measure can help unify an ensemble, by ensuring that everyone is feeling the same beat (as opposed to some counting in crotchets, others counting in minims). There has been some discussion along the lines that if a slow Tactus beat is good, then feeling a super-slow pulse (say 30, or even just 15 beats per minute) might be even better. But whilst there is evidence for very slow pulse in some medieval music, around the year 1600 ensemble unity was definitely organised on the Tactus time-scale at around 60 bpm.

Establishing an approximate calibration of real-world time to the speed of a minim in common time is also a vital first step towards understanding seicento Proportions. Whether or not a certain interpretation of the relationship between common and triple time is plausible, depends crucially on the starting tempo in common time. Somewhat illogically, current debate on Proportions recognises that historical notation was intended to fix the speed of triple metres (even if we do not yet have a consensus agreement about how to understand that notation), but resists the idea that the speed of common time was also fixed (as precisely as humanly possible). But Roger Mathew Grant’s Beating Time and Measuring Music shows how the entire system of Proportional notation depends crucially on common-time Tactus. The various Proportions are linked, like cog-wheels in a 17th-century clock, and calibrated to real-world time by setting common-time Tactus at the rate of one minim = one second (as precisely as humanly possible).

The pendulum effect, discovered by Galileo in the late 16-century but not built into a clock until 1656, was used to measure musical time by means of Loulié’s chronomètre (1696) and as late as 1840, in Bunting’s transcriptions of ancient Irish harp-music. With students from the Historical Harp Society of Ireland, we tried playing to a pendulum beat at Scoil na gClairseach: the experience is nothing like playing to a metronome click. Try it for yourself, and you’ll immediately appreciate the differences.

The movement of a pendulum, pausing momentarily at the end of each swing, leaves musicians a certain margin for subtle choice of where to ‘place’ the beat. To use the vocabulary of jazz, you can be ‘on the front of the beat’ or ‘laid back’. In this sense, a pendulum feels more ‘human’, less ‘mechanical’. However, the pendulum does not allow those subtle choices to pile up cumulatively: it checks any general tendency to rush or drag. Meanwhile, the strong but gentle movement of a pendulum has the same mesmeric effect of inducing relaxed concentration that we notice with the Tactus hand itself.

Down & Up

Re-reading seicento treatises reminded me that the Tactus movement is always described as down-up. So when using the Tactus hand as a rehearsal exercise, or in performances of Cavalieri’s (1600) Anima e Corpo at the Theatre Natalya Sats in Moscow, we abandoned the side-to-side swing in favour of the historical, vertical movement. This creates a subtle distinction between the two directions of movement, with Down having added significance, and facilitates awareness of the complete Tactus cycle, from Down to Down.

From my studies of historical swordsmanship, modern Feldenkrais Method and ancient Tai Chi, I can now appreciate that the sensation of ‘soft strength’ appropriate to beating musical time can be found by connecting the Tactus Hand down through the whole body. This requires a body-posture that maintains structural integrity with minimal tension. We can see such postures in period paintings and sculptures: a good posture for Tactus is also the starting point for Baroque Gesture, and for historically informed instrumental playing.

My training as a Hypnotist provides an explanation for the special sense of relaxation and concentration that focus on the Tactus can evoke. Following the lead of Milton H. Erickson (the father of modern hypnotism) and of Joe Griffin (theorist of the Origin of Dreams), it is now recognised that any experience of calm concentration can induce a particular state of mind. We can call this an Altered State of Consciousness, we can call it Flow or being in the Zone, we can call it Mindfulness or Meditatation: the labels don’t really matter. This phenomenon of heightened awareness is the key to optimal performance not only in music, but also in many other creative and sporting activities.

Preparing for the first performance in Russia of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers, we encountered many instances of slow triple-metre, notated as 3 Sesquialtera semibreves in the time of the 2 common-time minims. This can be a tricky Proportional change, but Tactus helps us manage it, especially with a vertical motion of the hand. The duration of the complete cycle from Down to Down continues unchanged: the only adjustment is that Down now lasts longer than Up.

Sesquialtera: Down – Up becomes Down – 2 – Up

In Spanish baroque music, the same adjustment happens even more frequently, whenever we find the cross-rhythm of Hemiola amongst a regular metre of Tripla. A well-known modern example is I wanna live in America: two units of Tripla, I wanna / live in A- / (Down Up) have the same duration as one unit of Hemiola me-ri-ca (Down – 2- Up).

One way to negotiate such shifts is to de-emphasise the Up stroke so that it simply doesn’t matter whether it is equal (Down Up) or unequal (Down – 2- Up). Instead, the focus is on preserving the equality of measure in the complete cycle, a consistent time between Down strokes. This focus on the complete Tactus-cycle, on the common-time semibreve rather than on the minim of each stroke, is mentioned in some period treatises, and works well for us in practice.

Towards the end of last year, working with multiple Tactus-beaters for polychoral music, I suddenly noticed a small detail of Tactus-beating that had previously escaped my attention. In the three-choir piece illustrated on the frontispiece of Praetorius’ Theatrum Instrumentorum, the Tactus Hands are shown palm outwards.

I immediately searched through other period images and consulted with colleagues. Though no-one else had noticed it before either, it became apparent that Tactus-beating was usually, perhaps always, palm-outwards. (Do let me know if you find evidence to the contrary, or if you would like to add to the mountain of evidence in favour of palm-out).

The historical movement of the Tactus Hand, down-up with the palm outwards, feels different, and subtly alters the relationship between the two strokes. And the connections to Baroque Gesture are highly significant. The starting position of Tactus (hand high, palm outwards) corresponds to the orator’s preparatory gesture, commanding the audience to be silent and listen. The powerful Down movement of the Tactus stroke corresponds to a gesture of authority, quelling and directing subordinates.

The period philosophy of the Music of the Spheres connects the perfect movement of the cosmos with the harmonious nature of the human body and with practical music-making. Similarly, heavenly Time directed by the Hand of God is reflected in the microcosm of the Human hand beating Tactus and in the perfection (to the limits of human ability) of musical rhythm. That rhythm is found by dividing the slow Tactus beat in various Proportions, just as the movement of the stars and planets are derived from the Primum Mobile. This concept is beautifully described in Dante’s Paradiso, Canto XXVII. Here is the classic Longfellow translation:

The nature of the universe, which holds the center still and moves all else around it, begins here as if from its turning-post.

This heaven has no other where than this: the mind of God, in which are kindled both the love that turns it and the force it rains.

No other heaven measures this sphere’s motion, but it serves as the measure for the rest, even as half and fifth determine ten;

and now it can be evident to you how time has roots within this vessel and, within the other vessels, has its leaves.

The Tactus Hand embodies the divine Hand of God; maintaining Tactus symbolises the turning of the cosmos; the movements of the Tactus Hand embody earthly authority and command listeners’ attention. However, the authority of Tactus is not located in the whims and fancies of an individual Tactus-beater: Tactus-beating is utterly different from modern conducting. The responsibility of a Tactus-beater is to recall and preserve the perfection of heavenly time, not to make personal choices. So it is that multiple Tactus-beaters can collaborate simultaneously, as Praetorius showed.

No-one is trying to make a personal interpretation of Time: everyone is trying to unite in finding the right time.

Some musicians feel a deep sense of responsibility to arrive at rehearsal on time. This is part of the respect we owe to the beauty and ineffable nature of Music itself. If you can understand such respect, then you might begin to understand the sense of high duty and precise timeliness that renaissance musicians felt about rhythm.

Music and other arts offer us earth-born creatures a glimpse of a world beyond the everyday. In period philosophy, the Tactus Hand allows musicians to touch the stars. We all know that Early Music was directed not by conductors, but by Tactus beaters. So why not try the Power of Tactus for yourself! I’m sure you’ll have a Good Time.

Opera, orchestra, vocal & ensemble director and early harpist, Andrew Lawrence-King is director of The Harp Consort and of Il Corago. From 2011 to 2015 he was Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Australian Research Council Centre for the History of Emotions. He is now preparing a translation of Bonifacio’s (1616) Art of Gesture and a book on The Theatre of Dreams: The Science of Historical Action.

Bach’s Prelude & Sarabande performed on baroque triple harp, against the background of a year of research, training and performance; publications, research findings; operas and concerts around the world.

Thanks to all co-researchers and musicians, friends, colleagues, participants and audiences!

Opera, orchestra, vocal & ensemble director and early harpist, Andrew Lawrence-King is director of The Harp Consort and of Il Corago. From 2011 to 2015 he was Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Australian Research Council Centre for the History of Emotions. He is now preparing a translation of Bonifacio’s (1616) Art of Gesture and a book on The Theatre of Dreams: The Science of Historical Action.

Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) is justly celebrated as the greatest German composer of the generation before Johann Sebastian Bach. Apart from his first book of madrigals, he left almost no secular music; no score for his (1627) opera, Dafne has survived. Even though he was an outstanding organist, he published no instrumental music. Nearly all his surviving compositions are settings of sacred texts, many of them in the grand style of divided choirs he learnt from Gabrieli, others in the new, dramatic style of Monteverdi.

Schütz was born in Bad Köstritz, near Leipzig, and grew up in nearby Weißenfels. He sang as a choir-boy for the Landgrave of Kassel, before travelling to Venice to study with Giovanni Gabrieli. He then spent most of his life in Dresden, creating an impressive body of work including settings of the Psalms, Historia (story-telling oratorios) of Christmas and the Resurrection, Passions (according to Matthew, Luke & John) and the Seven Last Words. The Italianate splendour of his style is proclaimed in the titles of his publications: Geistliche Concerte (two books) and Symphoniae Sacrae (three books) – spiritual concertos and sacred symphonies! Schütz returned to Venice in 1628 to study with Monteverdi, and travelled twice to work in Denmark.

Schütz was master of a great variety of 17th-century styles, from Flemish polyphony to the block harmonies of Italianate music for two, three or four choirs, from dance rhythms and folk melodies to the dramatic style of oratorios and opera. In all these styles, the music responds directly to the words, to the speech-patterns of language, to the poetry of the psalms, and to the drama of bible-stories. Even the most elaborate instrumental writing (violin double-stops, sound-effects of battle, rhythmic dances, thrilling fanfares and virtuosic passage-work) proceeds from imagery in the sacred texts.

It is sometimes suggested that Schütz reacted to Gabrieli’s teaching by imitating Monteverdi, whereas after studying with Monteverdi, he returned to a Gabrieli-like style with multiple choirs. Though there is a grain of truth in this, it misses the point that much of the later polychoral music is designed for flexible performance; during and after the 30-years war (1618-1648), German establishments could not always provide the full complement of musicians required for four-choir settings. Monteverdi’s influence as madrigalist and opera-composer is seen more subtly in Schütz’s response to Enargeia, the emotional power of detailed visual description. His favourite Psalm-texts display vivid poetic imagery; Bible-stories are represented as dramatic scenes in which voices and instruments take on character roles.

Psalm 150 invites ‘everything that hath breath’ to praise the Lord with songs and instruments. This ‘breath’ is renaissance Pneuma, the divine breath of life, the mind/body energy of human beings, and the mysterious Spirit of Passion that communicates emotions through poetry and music. Accordingly, King David’s musical instruments and dancing are heard in the grand harmonies of the Responsory and the slow Sesquialtera dance-rhythms of this Psalm. Similarly in Psalm 33, the words ‘sing to the Lord a new song’ call forth a fashionable instrumental effect: violin double-stops with tremolo. After this, the ‘string-playing with harp’ is set just as King David describes.

The cetra is the mythical lyre of Orpheus – in Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo a golden cetra played by La Musica not only flatters the ear but, as the lyre of heaven, it can move souls. Schütz sets Psalm 70, Eile mich Gott zu eretten, in the dramatic style of Italianate opera and his own oratorios. In contrast, the simple faith of Von Gott will ich nicht lassen is set to vocal and instrumental variations on a popular folk-melody known in Germany as the Christmas carol Nun helft mir Gottes Güte schon preisen, in France as the dance-song Une jeune fillette and in England and Scandinavia as The Queen’s Alman.

Episodes from the story of Christmas inspired many of Schütz’s compositions. A high tenor represents the Angel Gabriel in the Annunciation scene, leading to Mary’s great song of joy, the Magnificat. Schütz set this text many times; the setting in Symphoniae Sacrae II (1647) casts Mary as a solo soprano and recalls Monteverdi’s Vespers with its elaborate instrumental writing. As the scene changes to the fields where the Shepherds watch over their flocks, Schütz depicts the angel choir’s concerto with the serene harmonies of Andrea Gabrieli’s (1576) motet Angelus ad Pastores ait, brought to the German congregation as Der Engel sprach zu den Hirten. The choral melody Veni, Sancte Spiritus is ornamented in dance-rhythms, with glorious moments of Giovanni Gabrieli-like tutti at the sacred words O lux beatissima (O most blessed light)and sacrum septenarium (the sacred sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit).

Later, the angel appears again to Joseph, warning him to take Mary and the Baby to Egypt, in order to avoid Herod’s wrath. Schütz casts King David as a bass, lamenting the death of his son, Absalon, amidst the solemn sonority of four sackbuts. In Psalm 68, paying homage to Monteverdi’s Combattimento, violins imitate the sounds of battle as God arises to destroy his enemies: but the righteous rejoice with the party-music of ciacona, citing Monteverdi’s Zefiro torna. Pharaoh’s army are drowned in the Red Sea (Psalm 136), but God’s goodness endures forever. Schütz depicts divine eternity with seemingly endless repetitions of the psalmist’s refrain, culminating in a final fanfare. No score is provided for this, since each Prince would have his own fanfare, which his trumpeters would play (from memory, of course) whenever required.

Baroque composers were utterly practical. Schütz explains how his music is scored flexibly, and can be adapted for various combinations of voices and instruments, for larger or smaller ensembles. In that period, the art of contrafactum, the skilful re-arrangement of pre-extant material, was greatly admired, and several of Schütz’s compositions adapt or refer to Italian originals. In general, 17th-century music was not conducted: one of the great ironies of today’s Early Music is to see an ensemble of period instruments or renaissance singers directed in 19th/20th-century manner by a conductor standing in front! However, in polychoral music it was customary to have several conductors simultaneously, one for each choir, relaying the Tactus around the building. Praetorius’ (1620) Theatrum Instrumentorum shows how German ensembles managed this (for us today, unfamiliar) practice.

Large-scale performances would of course have an artistic director, known in early 17th-century Italy as the Corago, who would take directorial decisions and coordinate rehearsals, but who would NOT conduct the performance.

With no conductor to warp time with romantic rubato or rallentando, each musician shares responsibility for maintaining the Tactus, that earthly microcosm of the hand of God directing the perfect rhythm of the heavens. Tactus also represents the human pulse, which should not falter or stop. So, if the time was kept steadily, where is the expression in 17th-century music? Schutz inherited the Flemish polyphonic style, in which individual voices clash in emotionally-laden dissonances, then resolve into gentle consonance. And he studied the Italian seconda prattica, in which Enargeia in the imagery of the text powers dramatic effects in the music, and the force of Pneuma transmits emotions to performers and listeners. Modern audiences, like a baroque congregation, are invited to apply the force of their own imagination to create a Theatre of Instruments, transforming Schütz’s music into dramatic scenes of Angels and Shepherds, King David, holy Mary, and Biblical battles.

Opera, orchestra, vocal & ensemble director and early harpist, Andrew Lawrence-King is director of The Harp Consort and of Il Corago. From 2011 to 2015 he was Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Australian Research Council Centre for the History of Emotions. He is now preparing a translation of Bonifacio’s (1616) Art of Gesture and a book on The Theatre of Dreams: The Science of Historical Action.

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ANDREW LAWRENCE-KING

Baroque opera & orchestral director , imaginative continuo-player, Early Harp virtuoso, specialist in baroque gesture & Historical Action, investigator of Flow, Andrew Lawrence-King is one of the world’s leading performers of Early Music and the most recorded harpist of all time.
Andrew has directed at La Scala, Milan & Sydney Opera House and won Russia's highest theatrical award, Golden Mask (2012). With Jordi Savall he won a Grammy (2011) & Australia’s Helpmann Award (2013).
From 2010-2015, he was Senior Visiting Research Fellow for the Australian Centre for the History of Emotions.
Andrew Lawrence-King directs The Harp Consort, combining state-of-the art early music performance with stylish improvisation & entertaining stage presentation; Il Corago, the production team for historical staging of early opera; International Baroque Opera Studio.
Andrew's hobbies include marathon running, sailing, kayaking, fencing (modern epée & historical rapier) and Tai Chi. He is a qualified hypnotist.